n for believing this was that on one occasion the man in question
had given away more to a poor neighbour than Donald was pleased to
spare. Donald found fault with him, and in the quarrel that followed
the man said, "I will be avenged for this, alive or dead".

It was on the hill that Donald first met with the bocan, but he soon
came to closer quarters, and haunted the house in a most annoying
fashion. He injured the members of the household, and destroyed all
the food, being especially given to dirtying the butter (a thing quite
superfluous, according to Captain Burt's description of Highland
butter). On one occasion a certain Ronald of Aberardair was a guest
in Donald's house, and Donald's wife said, "Though I put butter on the
table for you tonight, it will just be dirtied". "I will go with you
to the butter-keg," said Ronald, "with my dirk in my hand, and hold my
bonnet over the keg, and he will not dirty it this night." So the two
went together to fetch the butter, but it was dirtied just as usual.

Things were worse during the night and they could get no sleep for the
stones and clods that came flying about the house. "The bocan was
throwing things out of the walls, and they would hear them rattling at
the head of Donald's bed." The minister came (Mr. John Mor MacDougall
was his name) and slept a night or two in the house, but the bocan
kept away so long as he was there. Another visitor, Angus MacAlister
Ban, whose grandson told the tale, had more experience of the bocan's
reality. "Something seized his two big toes, and he could not get
free any more than if he had been caught by the smith's tongs. It was
the bocan, but he did nothing more to him." Some of the clergy, too,
as well as laymen of every rank, were witnesses to the pranks which
the spirit carried on, but not even Donald himself ever saw him in any
shape whatever. So famous did the affair become that Donald was
nearly ruined by entertaining all the curious strangers who came to
see the facts for themselves.

In the end Donald resolved to change his abode, to see whether he
could in that way escape from the visitations. He took all his
possessions with him except a harrow, which was left beside the wall
of the house, but before the party had gone far on the road the harrow
was seen coming after them. "Stop, stop," said Donald; "if the harrow
is coming after us, we may just as well go back again." The mystery
of the harrow is not explain